Creative brief

What does your company do?

We are a small family winery having started a couple of years ago in Argentina. We produce quality Malbec red wines and we have a range of 4 different wines, at different prices and quality levels, but all in the superior to premium category.We won several major awards already, including a Decanter Regional Trophy for “Best Argentinian Malbec over £10”, a 90-point rating in Wine Enthusiast Magazine, as well as several Gold Medals around the world (Concours Mondial, San Francisco International Wine Competition, SMV Canada, Vinalies Internationales).

Do you require that a .COM or other URL be available for the new name?

no, but each time you suggest a name please check at least on google that another winery is not using it, or worst, a mass produced item that name (washing powder for instance!)

What is your industry?

Food and Beverage

Describe your customers

Higher income bracketFood/Wine/Travel loversWell-educated, cultured

What 3 things do you want your company name to communicate to your customers?

Quality, Style, Eye-catching

and also: Minimalist/Names easy to pronounce/Modern

List the names of your top three competitors

please see examples in the label pictures attached

What character, tenor, or spirit do you wish to convey?

The first year, we released labels which were too conventional and classic. What we did the first year and what I thought was a mistake was to impose a HIERARCHY to the wines names and label styles: “Terroir” (the least expensive wine), then “Réserve”, then “Grande Réserve” (the most expensive one). But in fact, I do not think you should tell the customer which wine is supposed to be the best and which one is supposed to be the cheapest, as it devalorises the cheaper of the three, and puts too much pressure on the most expensive, too. Wine is a very subjective area: sometimes people prefer our “Terroir” wine, but are afraid to say so because the bottle did not look as prestigious and they were “ashamed” to admit they preferred the least expensive wine.

Also, remember that the retail price of our wines are driven by how the Critics (Robert Parker, Jancis Robinson, Wine Spectator, Wine Enthusiast) rate the wines, and not what you decide (if there is more demand for one wine in particular, the retailer will put the prices up for this wine and increase his margins on that product due to high demand and limited supply). So imposing a hierarchy from the start in the names of the wines is not wise, as it might be the “Réserve” getting better Parker Ratings than the “Grande Réserve” for instance. If there is no hierarchy in the names, then it is fine, but if there is a hierarchy and it is not the top one getting the top scores, then it looks odd. And it happened already!

- As a result, what I now want to launch is not a hierarchical series of names. I want instead a CONSTELLATION-type series of names, or a family of names, or names interlinked with each other but with no hierarchy. So no more Terroir -> Réserve -> Grande Réserve, but more names of the same level, related to each other, but with no superiority of one over the other, like for instance the Four Elements (but this has of course been used in the past!), the Four Cardinal Points, etc. Bear in mind we will be adding another wine to our collection so we need four names, not three.

Examples of names we are looking for – this is only a guide and many other ideas can be accepted! Beware that most options in the fields below are already being used!

- 4 names of various Gods in ancient civilization, ideally gods from South America as we produce Argentinian wines.

- 4 names of planets or stars or galaxies, but they’ve been used a lot so you would need to find something new, which can be challenging.

- 4 nouns (easy to pronounce!) from a South American dialect, which are somehow linked to each other

Are there any words or phrases you especially like or hate?

- No names already in use for wine or being in use for a “non-noble” product (ie. washing powder, mass products, etc…). Please systematically google the names each time you have something in mind (google and google images) to find out if they would make sense in the current wine industry.

- No four First Names (ie. Maria-Angela-Sofia-Cecilia), except names of Divinity / Ancient Gods, which have NOT been used in the past. Some winemakers do this because they have four daughters, etc. but this naming process has been used and re-used already.

- No “1-letter wine” names inspired by the Greek Alphabet or Roman numbers: they have used and re-used for both wines and champagne (“Cuvée Omega” “Phi”, “Khi”, “IV”, “XXI”etc.). If you are going to venture into this, please look at less used alphabets (ancient civilizations), or hieroglyphs. Moreover, the use of any such sign must be motivated by an actual meaning for the wine (ie. letters/signs representing concepts which would make sense for the different wines, such as “Harmony”, “Beauty”, “Longevity”, etc.)

- Finally, please find PRONOUNCEABLE wine names, with one, two, maximum three syllables (not more!). It is a fact that people will NOT order a wine which name they cannot pronounce at the restaurant, or are afraid of pronouncing badly (such as some French names) and risk sounding stupid / lacking culture. As a consequence, the names should be pronounceable everywhere in the world, quite straightforwardly.

- The four elements would of course be a good idea given my brief, but it LACKS ORIGINALITY and you can imagine everybody has thought about it already. In general, beware of all of the ideas you will initially have!: by definition, many other people will have thought of it already, and the names will already be in use (or there will be a good reason why they aren’t – copyright, vulgar/offensive in one particular language, etc.

Do you have other info you want to share?

- Spanish language or South American Tribal dialect (though not essential as it limits options as well – but it would be ideal to have names in Spanish or Latin)

- 4 things found in Argentina (type of animals, birds, mountains, trees, wind: but most of those have of course been used before, hence the difficulty!)

- 4 local divinity / god names / ancient alphabet letters

- But if you are looking in the fields above, you might limit your imagination, which is not good either. And bear in mind that anything above has already been brainstormed by many winemakers, so you will need to innovate

Brief updates

12-May-13 9:53 p.m.GMT

1) not directly important, but our current wines retail for US$19 for the Terroir, US$28 for the Réserve and US$45 for the "Grande Réserve". The fourth wine (not yet released, but which name you will have to find along the 3 other new names for the wines above) will retail for around 14 US$. 2) also, for your information: our wines are currently present in 10 different countries (Sweden, Spain, France, United Kingdom, Brazil, Argentina, Canada, Hong Kong, etc.) and we are now planning our debut in the US, with Florida, New York, and California to start with. Given the variety of consumers, we need names which can be easily pronounceable globally ideally (not just in English).

Good luck, I will be providing as much feedback and ratings as possible on the entries I get, I will be checking the website at least daily, and often much more frequently.Thanks

12-May-13 9:59 p.m.GMT

Location precision: We are based in Tupungato, Valle de Uco, Mendoza Province, Argentina. Names cannot be names of various places in Argentina, as we are based in Tupungato and not elsewhere, and we source all our grape for our land there. So 4 names can be anything except names of places in Argentina, which would not mean anything in our context.

12-May-13 11:57 p.m.GMT

Several entries only submit one word, this is not the way to do it.Here is the methodology for submitting something:1) You suggest a group of 4 words for the 4 wines, as required in the brief2) but then, most importantly, not only you explain why you chose those 4 words individually, but you prove why you think they are strongly connected to each other, and would make sense being used as a series of 4 wines from the same winery. Indeed, IMPORTANT: we DO NOT WANT A SIMPLE JUXTAPOSITION OF 4 RANDOM NAMES, but we need a group of 4 concepts or words linked with each other, and making sense when used together (the idea of the 4 Elements springs to mind for instance, in terms of how 4 words should be different, have a meaning by themselves, and yet be connected to each other: Earth, Water, Air, Fire / but this is already taken of course, so we need to brainstorm on other families of 4 names)Cheers

26-May-13 5:58 p.m.GMT

Hi, I will be travelling over the next two days and so far names still need some improvement (even with the best entries), so I believe that a one-week will be optimal to achieve the best results. Many thanks for your understanding.

7-Aug-13 6:12 p.m.GMT

Thanks for all your entries. A winner will finally be picked tomorrow.